Field Operations Wins Massive Memphis Park Competition

Landscape architect James Corner unveiled plans yesterday for creating America’s largest urban park in Memphis: a 4,500-acre site, five-times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park. Corner’s firm, Field Operations, beat out Hargreaves Associates and Tom Leader Studio, the other finalists in a six-month competition to master plan Shelby Farms, a patchwork of open space that had been a state-run prison farm during the mid-20th century and has since remained un-programmed. Architectural Record

Architectural Record article:

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Field Ops Wins Massive Memphis Park Competition
by Alec Appelbaum
published on April 10, 2008

Field Operations Master Plan

Corner describes his design as one that blends the site’s agricultural history with contemporary amenities. While the great 19th century parks cast themselves as places to stroll, Shelby Farms’ broad parcels and long horizons favor more intense explorations. “Imagine a Central Park that people use for fox hunting,” Corner says, adding: “what’s difficult to convey is the sheer size.” The park covers seven square miles and will be home to as many as 1 million new trees.

Field Operations’s scheme includes an open bison range, an arboretum, a four-mile perimeter lake, and gardens. The strategy absorbs the site’s agricultural history and the philosophy of the Agricenter, a public-private partnership that currently occupies part of the land and offers sustainable farming, RV parking, rodeos, and daily farmer’s markets.

The Agricenter

Research Fields + Nursery

Shelby Public Gardens

“For us, playing with the idea of a farm includes not just an agricultural farm, but a sports farm or a cultural farm,” Corner says. “A farm is about improving—so you’re improving health or improving a sports team. This goes well in Memphis and the Southeast, where there’s lots of new interest in exercise.”

Patriot Lake 3.0

Shelby Farms School

The Art Mound

As the firm has done with similar projects, such as its scheme to transform the former Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, New York, Field Operations has proposed the creation of distinct zones to segment the parkland. One area will offer running and biking trails, another will house an amphitheater, and yet another will become host to land-art installations. A conservancy established to manage the park hopes to begin construction by next year with an initial outlay of $100 million and complete the project by 2023.

The Range + Arboretum

The Refuge

Field Operations Master Plan

See images of the competing designs by Hargreaves Associates and Tom Leader Studio on Shelby Farms Park’s official website.